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Novelist Peter Carey draws the reader into a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and re-discovery of Sydney.

After living in New York for ten years novelist Peter Carey returned home to Sydney with the idea of capturing its ebullient character via the four elements. 'I would never seek to define Manhattan by asking my New York friends for stories of Earth and Air and Fire and Water,' he writes, 'but that is exactly what was in my mind as I walked through immigration at Kingsford Smith International Airport.'

Carey draws the reader helplessly into a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and re-discovery. Reading this book is a very physical experience, as bracing as the southerly buster that sometimes batters Sydney's beauteous shores. Famous visual extravaganzas such as Bondi Beach, the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and the Blue Mountains all take on a strange new intensity when exposed to the penetrating gaze of Peter and his friends.

Thirty Days in Sydney offers the reader a private glimpse behind the glittering facades and venetian blinds. It will exhilarate and enchant all who visit.

About the Author

Peter Carey was born in 1943 in Australia and lives in New York. He is the author of the highly acclaimed selection of short stories, The Fat Man in History, nine previous novels, Bliss, Illywhacker (shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize), Oscar and Lucinda (winner of the 1988 Booker Prize), The Tax Inspector, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs (winner of the 1998 Commonwealth Writers Prize), True History of the Kelly Gang (winner of the 2001 Booker Prize), My Life as a Fake, Theft, a book for children, The Big Bazoohley, and a work of non-fiction, Wrong About Japan.

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This 2001 book interprets the predicament faced by Australia's regional people from their own perspective and proposes a means by which they can act together to find a secure future under globalisation. It argues that neoliberalism in combination with its 'real world' effects in economic policy are driving regional Australia further into social, environmental and economic decay. Gray and Lawrence advocate a new kind of regionalism with broad objectives for people to pursue. This takes discussion about rural and regional policies out of the contexts of trade and industry policies and into the realm of the social and political. Ideas developed throughout the book are drawn from rural sociology, community studies, rural geography, political economy and regional studies.